Reconfigurable Automation Systems in Manufacturing

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) offers new opportunities for organizational knowledge management, particularly when it comes to learning processes at the interface between explicit, firm-specific, and tacit knowledge. Its use is therefore of particular interest for application areas such as industrial maintenance. Based on a mechanical engineering case study, this article demonstrates that augmenting both processes and employees with GenAI requires AI literacy combined with professional skills.

Companies are increasingly challenged to address shortages of skilled workers while meeting rising demands for productivity, flexibility, and innovation. Because labor supply can only be expanded to a limited extent, there is a growing focus on designing work systems with productivity in mind. Autonomous systems offer significant potential in this regard. Their implementation requires not only technical adjustments but, above all, changes in organization, skills, and work design. This article analyzes empirically grounded change requirements in existing work systems as well as associated economic potential.

Demographic change is accompanied by both a growing demand for care and a shortage of qualified nursing staff. Consequently, AI-based technologies are increasingly becoming a focus of care-related innovations. Their aim is to reduce workload pressure, save time, and enhance the attractiveness of the nursing profession. Using the example of AI-supported documentation systems for admission interviews, this article examines to what extent such systems can contribute to improvements in work processes and care quality, focusing on the perspectives of nursing professionals and nursing experts. The results indicate potential for workload relief, enhanced documentation quality, and the reallocation of time resources toward direct patient care. However, realizing these potentials requires a human-centered and context-sensitive implementation approach.

The increasing complexity of industrial environments demands new competencies from workers, particularly the ability to interact with advanced digital systems. Traditional training methods often fall short in supporting the effective transfer of applied knowledge to such contexts, and the effectiveness of this transfer, as measured by performance-based outcomes, remains to be investigated. To address this gap, the present study employed a between-subjects experimental design comparing augmented reality- and paper-based instructions within a realistic production training scenario. The results show that participants who learned with augmented reality completed the production process significantly faster and with fewer errors than those using paper instructions. In addition, learners using augmented reality reported higher usability and experienced lower cognitive load during training. These findings suggest that augmented reality can enhance the transfer of practical skills in industrial ...